Junior Cert English Papers 1 and 2

Jack

My very first State exam… ever. It was quite daunting.

I took my seat in the exam hall and waited the nerve wrecking thirty minutes until the paper was handed out. Once we were allowed to being, I skimmed through the paper. It seemed okay at a quick glance.

I went straight into reading. Nothing too difficult, to be fair. It was pretty straight forward. I think I did okay. I took advice from the Mocks and added more quotes!

I went on to functional writing next. I was happy with this question. It was easy! I opted for 1. I finished in about twenty minutes. It was a nice question to do. Not too strenuous at all!

I went to media studies next. I went with the Product Placement question. It was easy enough, I guess. I managed to fit Peppa Pig in to my answer which was funny!

I went back to personal writing then. I went with option 4 – mistaken identity. I was about to write about being mistaken for someone in a band but at the last minute changed to being mistaken as a murderer. Possibly a bad idea. It seemed pretty much everyone did that! Oh well. I guess it’s the content that counts.

Overall, Paper One was okay. I feel it went good enough!

It seems I’m not the only one not exactly happy with Paper Two… It was confusing at times. Let’s dive in.

On opening the paper, I skimmed through and went to Drama. I chose thShakespearian Drama and I picked questions 2 and 3. They were okay. Nothing too complicated. For Question Two, I opted to do 2. I wrote about Act 1, Scene 1 and Act 1, Scene 3. I think I did quite okay with that question.

I skipped poetry and went to fiction. My… fiction. What is going on. Unseen was just a mess. “Can you relate to Jane?” (paraphrasing but you know…). Really? I can’t… because I’m a boy. Wow. Part two. “Is Michael an attractive character?” Wait, what? I found this confusing. I ended up writing about his personality and how he was mean for building Jane up just to bring her down and embarrass her in front of everyone. The question was not clear. People wrote about Michael’s physical attraction. It seems everyone is unhappy with the Fiction question. It was terribly unfair, in my opinion. Unclear and possibly biased to girls. Studied fiction was tough. I found it hard to write about liking a character from Of Mice and Men. In the end, I just rambled on about Lennie’s innocence and so forth. Hopefully it will do.

I went back to poetry then. I found that confusing too! I didn’t know what I was supposed to learn from thirty-six lines of boxing! I ended up waffling on about how he was nervous to begin with but gained confidence to win. I went to 2 next, which was a fair bit easier. Studied poetry was good enough, to be fair. I went with option 2 and wrote about Heaney.

Overall, Paper Two was tiring and tough. I think Fiction was unclear and unfair but Poetry and Drama were okay.

Now, off for Irish tomorrow. Good luck to all!

David

Hi all, I’m just back from sitting English paper two! English paper one couldn’t have been any nicer! I was seriously happy with and I was proud with my essay. The reading section of paper one was kind of like a cross between media studies and a reading comprehension but it was still okay. Paper two was lovely! My timing came close though and I was worried, but I still got it all finished, the studied poetry wasn’t a very nice question (either of them) for me but the rest was brilliant, the studied fiction question was a big relief after all my worrying about not knowing my novel well enough. Studied Fiction was great as well so all in all I’m very happy. I’m not going to predict anything with a subjective subject like English, but hopefully I will live up to the A I got in the mocks… oh well no point worrying over something that I can’t change! .. I’m off to cram for Irish!

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